Trace element emissions from spontaneous combustion of gob piles in coal mines, Shanxi, China

Estimate of sulfur, arsenic, mercury, fluorine emissions due to spontaneous combustion of coal gangue: An important part of Chinese emission inventories

“…There are approximately more than 4.5 Gt of coal gangue cumulated, which occupied more than 15,000 km 2 of land in China up to 2010 (Bian et al, 2009;Zhao et al, 2008). The annual production of coal gangue sharply increased after 2000, and the output exceeded 0.75 Gt in 2013 (NDRCC, 2014) ( Fig.…”

“…(2), the emissions of sulfur, arsenic, mercury, and fluoride from spontaneous combustion of coal gangue in China in 2013 are approximately calculated at 1.13 million tons, 246 tons, 45 tons, and 63,298 tons, on complete combustion condition, respectively (Table 3). This estimate is based on spontaneous combustion ratio of 1/3 (Querol et al, 2008;Zhao et al, 2008), ash content of 70% (average values based on our results), coal gangue production 750 million tons in 2013 (NDRCC, 2014), and the mean content of these elements calculated in this paper.…”

“…With continuous growth of coal mining and coal cleaning, a large amount of coal gangue are produced, which contain sulfide minerals, alumino-silicates minerals, other inorganic minerals, and organic matter (Querol et al, 2008;Zhao et al, 2008;Zhou et al, 2014). The current disposal of such a large quantity of coal gangue occupies a lot of land and has caused many serious environmental problems (e.g.…”

“…Some studies involved the trace elements abundance properties, toxicity and partitioning characterization of coal gangue, and the control of its spontaneous combustion (e.g. Querol et al, 2008;Zhao et al, 2008;Fu et al, 2012;Zhou et al, 2012Zhou et al, , 2014. However, few quantitative estimates have been conducted on total emissions of sulfur and toxic trace elements (e.g.…”

Spontaneous combustion of the Upper Paleocene Cerrejón Formation coal and generation of clinker in La Guajira Peninsula (Caribbean Region of Colombia)

“…One of the biggest concerns in the world with the use of coal is the environmental impact generated by some trace elements which, despite being in very low concentrations, are very harmful, particularly to human health. Recently, different authors (Zhao et al, 2008;Querol et al, 2008;Dai et al, 2008) characterized the trace elements in coals of different places in the world and wastes generated during the combustion and conversion processes. This is very important to directly contribute to the prevention of environmental pollution problems (Finkelman et al, 2002).…”